Proprietary software keeps users divided and helpless. Divided because each user is forbidden to redistribute it to others, and helpless because the users can’t change it since they don’t have the source code. They can’t study what it really does. So the proprietary program is a system of unjust power. Richard Stallman Read Quote
Facebook mistreats its users. Facebook is not your friend; it is a surveillance engine. For instance, if you browse the Web and you see a ‘like’ button in some page or some other site that has been displayed from Facebook. Therefore, Facebook knows that your machine visited that page. Richard Stallman Read Quote
In the free/libre software movement, we develop software that respects users’ freedom, so we and you can escape from software that doesn’t. Richard Stallman Read Quote
If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough – you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal. Richard Stallman Read Quote
Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. ‘Don’t bother us with politics’, respond those who don’t want to learn. Richard Stallman Read Quote
If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs. Richard Stallman Read Quote
If ebooks mean that readers’ freedom must either increase or decrease, we must demand the increase. Richard Stallman Read Quote
Control over the use of one’s ideas really constitutes control over other people’s lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult. Richard Stallman Read Quote
I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place. Richard Stallman Read Quote
In the U.S., you even lose legal rights if you store your data in a company’s machines instead of your own. The police need to present you with a search warrant to get your data from you; but if they are stored in a company’s server, the police can get it without showing you anything. They may not even have to give the company a search warrant. Richard Stallman Read Quote
